TELEVISION REVIEW

Russia's Loose Uranium

By WALTER GOODMAN

Published: November 19, 1996

''Loose Nukes'' begins with the warning that chaos and corruption in the new Russia are putting tons of nuclear material at risk and devotes much of the rest of the hour to reports of smuggling. The detective work of Sherry Jones, though inconclusive about the sources of the uranium and plutonium that have been spirited to Germany and Czechoslovakia, is loaded with suspicion that Russian scientists are in on it and Russian officials are covering up.

The bothersome thing about uranium and plutonium is that a little goes such a long way. A Russian scientist with a taste for imagery compares highly enriched uranium to spaghetti: ''You may just put it in your pocket.'' I don't know anybody who carries spaghetti in a pocket, but one smuggler reportedly put a batch of uranium into his underwear on a train trip from Moscow to Minsk to Warsaw and finally to Prague, where he was caught. An American expert says that for countries with nuclear ambitions, like Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Pakistan, a pocketful could speed up its bomb-making from years to weeks or days. Imagine what an underwearful could do.

With the help of an Izvestia reporter, Ms. Jones catches up with one man who has confessed that he was in on a uranium-smuggling operation. But he declines to tell where or whom the stuff came from.

So far, the narrator notes, no Russian nuclear materials have been traced to rogue states or to terrorist groups. But the program's ominous point is that security is so weak at nuclear installations spread across what used to be the Soviet Union and corruption is so rife that it may be only a matter of time before small-time smugglers like those identified here make a big connection.

The repeated suggestion, fallout from these incidents, is that Russian officials have no interest in any investigation. The program, which untypically for ''Frontline'' offers more in the way of mood than of matter, leaves viewers with the ''nightmare scenario'' that ''nuclear material, lots of it, could be moved out of Russia if high-level corrupt insiders are involved.''

FRONTLINE

Loose Nukes

PBS, tonight

(Channel 13, New York, at 9)

Produced by Sherry Jones and directed by Foster Wiley. For Frontline: Michael Sullivan, executive producer; David Fanning, senior executive producer. Frontline is produced by a consortium of public television stations: WGBH/Boston, WTVS/Detroit, WPBT/Miami, WNET/New York and KCTS/Seattle.